random (Jewish) bits

Online, searchable bible, talmud, and others... as a Firefox extension (Hebrew only). Nifty! (And the keyboard for typing Hebrew can be used other ways, too, which solves another problem I sometimes have.) Thank you jducoeur. (I have a CD library with search in English and Hebrew, but it never hurts to have more, especially if they do upgrade the extension to do morphological search, which the tool I have doesn't do. Besides, while it doesn't happen often, it's nice to be able to look something up from other than my home machine.)

A former congregant was just ordained as a Reconstructionist rabbi. She came back to visit this past Shabbat, but disappeared after the morning service within about five minutes (before I got a chance to talk with her). Sigh. So I don't know how long she's back in town, where she's staying, or what her future plans are. I last saw her in December and would love to know how she's doing now that she's finished the program.

My rabbi, the cantorial soloist, and I need to have a meeting to go over plans for the bar mitzvah in a few weeks. We've been trying to have this meeting for a few weeks, but things keep happening. Looks like later this week for sure. The soloist said in passing (Friday night) something like "it's ok; I can do that service cold", which misses the point -- even if she can and I can, that doesn't mean we can. I learned that rather thoroughly during the Sh'liach K'hilah program. If I were doing the service by myself everything would be fine; there are other people involved, however, so we need to make sure everyone knows who does what.

I got a bit of an insight Shabbat morning, when someone was talking about her child's (recent) bar mitzvah and how the rabbi had been really good to work with -- he knew how to give her son quiet reassurances during the service when he was getting nervous, but also knew when to just let him fix the problems he was having. I won't just be leading a service; I'll be facilitating a significant life-cycle event for someone, and for the kid it's probably the most nervousness-inducing thing he's ever done. There's a lot to being a rabbi that has nothing to do with liturgical fluency and scholarship. (Apropos of nothing, it sometimes seems that there's a fair bit of social work/counselling in the job, too.)

Noticed Shabbat morning during torah study: when Moshe is lecturing the people about the importance of keeping God's commandments, in Deut 5:3 he says "God did not make this covenant with our fathers but with us". I really expected to see an "only" there. God did make a covenent with their fathers (the ones who actually left Egypt; Moshe is now speaking to their children). But there is no "only" ("rak") there. Now if you believe that Deuteronomy was written later, or by men, you can just say that, well, Moshe is playing a little fast and loose with the facts for the sake of rhetoric. (It wouldn't be the only thing he says that doesn't track 100% with the earlier accounts.) If it's all divine writ, though, the problem is a little harder. I find myself wondering if the distinction is in fact important -- maybe that God attempted to make a covenant with their fathers, but a covenant requires two partners and they weren't up to the task, so maybe (in the end) it's saying that the first real covenant was with their children. I don't think that's a view that would have much support in tradition, because the image of standing at Sinai to recieve torah is so powerful and so infused in Jewish tradition, but it's what came to mind.

other random bits

We went to see my parents on Sunday. It was nice to see them again. Apparently my niece is serious about wanting to move to Italy after she graduates. More power to her. She's an art (art-history? not sure if she formally changed) major who wants a museum job (specifics unknown to me); it seems like that'd be hard to come by and almost certainly means moving anyway, so she may as well go for what excites her if she can.

My parents wanted to show off their shiny new mall (Pittsburgh Mills), but it was raining so we didn't see much of it. I am not a recreational shopper (unless it caters to my particular obsessions, but I don't get excited over things like clothes), and mostly one expanse of stores is much like another to me, so shrug. I don't need to see the third local Barnes & Noble or the 437th Starbucks; I care about the unusual or unique stores, but they are very much the minority in such developments. (And in the "some things never change" department, service in the new mall's new Eat & Park was very slow. We were on the verge of walking out without paying not because we're that kind of people but because we couldn't find anyone who would take our money.)

Later Sunday we went to afternoon tea hosted by a friend, but the aforementioned rain meant we didn't go out into her garden. It was a pleasant gathering, though, and the tea and little sandwiches and cookies were tasty.

Dani and I didn't catch Firefly when it was on TV, so when we were recently ordering stuff anyway we picked up the show on DVD. We've seen three episodes so far, and it's got my attention. I take it we aren't going to find out what's up with River before the end of the show (or the movie)? I was a little surprised to see how overtly a western it is -- the horses in the first episode and the bar fight in the second augmented the soundtrack and the characters' general style. :-)

Given how little TV we watch (less now that West Wing and Commander in Chief are done), I wonder if it would ultimately be cheaper to cancel the cable and just buy the interesting shows when they come out on DVD. As a benchmark for lag time I just checked Amazon, and this year's Invasion is due out in August. But hey -- it says "complete series"? Did they really not renew it? Bummer -- I'd heard that they did, but apparently they changed their minds.